


the future's in our hands (and we will never be the same again)

by Caelum_Blue



Series: Kataang Week 2020 [5]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Airbending & Airbenders, Angst, Conversations, Episode: s01e09 The Waterbending Scroll, Gen, Genocide (Mentioned), Kataang Week 2020, Waterbending & Waterbenders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:20:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25639408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caelum_Blue/pseuds/Caelum_Blue
Summary: Written for Kataang Week 2020. Prompt - Heritage/Responsibilities.The morning after escaping the pirates, Katara studies the waterbending scroll, and Aang considers loss.
Relationships: Aang & Katara (Avatar)
Series: Kataang Week 2020 [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1851361
Comments: 15
Kudos: 73





	the future's in our hands (and we will never be the same again)

**Author's Note:**

> My Kataang Week entries are turning out to be a sort of Fluff-Angst-Fluff-Angst sandwich. Don't worry, tomorrow's fluff again!
> 
> Title shamelessly taken from Things We Lost In The Fire, which is a great song for anything victimized-by-the-Fire-Nation related. Is that song old enough that filching lyrics from it for titles could be considered Fandom Retro by now? I never got to go at it the first time around so I don't care either way lol.
> 
> Warnings for talk of genocide.
> 
> Enjoy!

Katara tucked the waterbending scroll away in one of the saddlebags and didn’t touch it again for the rest of the day. Aang had Appa fly as fast and as far as he could, heading northeast, away from the sea and further inland where hopefully neither the Fire Prince nor the pirates would be able to follow them. In the evening they camped beside a small river that was too shallow for a boat to navigate, feeling secure in their escape.

The next morning, Aang woke to find Katara carefully shifting her weight through the stances of the single whip, a stream of water floating beside her hands. The riverbank was a carpet of brown stones and pebbles that crunched under her feet with every movement, and the moon above her was a waning gibbous, hanging over the hills in the gray morning sky.

“Good morning,” Aang said, floating to Katara’s side. He approached carefully - yesterday her water whips had been all over the place, and she was still learning.

“Morning,” she said, her eyes darting to the waterbending scroll she’d left open on a log. It wasn’t a very good angle for glancing at. Aang picked it up and helpfully held it up. “Thanks.” She shifted into the next stance, the water following.

Aang watched her make the next few moves before asking, “How does it feel?”

“Like I have no idea what I’m doing,” she admitted, fumbling as she tried to figure out how to move her arms from one position to the next. The result wasn’t very graceful.

“That’s normal when you’re learning,” Aang said, cheerful. “You’ve just got to build up the muscle memory. Once you’re used to the movements, they’ll come easily.” He watched her nearly trip over her own feet, and said, “It’s okay, Katara.”

“It’s  _ not _ okay,” she blurted, and the water spasmed in mid-air.

Aang’s smile faltered. 

“It’s just - I should already know this,” she said, looking at her water. “But I don’t. These moves are - they don’t look super advanced, and I’m still having problems with them. It feels like I’m missing things. Warm-up stretches, katas, beginner exercises - but I don’t know this stuff.”

Aang gave her a sympathetic look. “Katara, it’s not  _ your _ fault no one was around to teach you.”

“I know it’s not,” she said. “It’s the Fire Nation’s.”

Katara and Sokka didn’t talk much about the specifics of what had happened to the Southern Water Tribe in the last hundred years. Aang remembered the place as it used to be - dozens of distinct tribes with their own territories and cultures that tended to move with the seasons. They’d also had some permanent villages, trading posts, and one large town clustered around a main harbor where all the tribes could gather and the rest of the world would dock and do business. Generally speaking though, the Southern Water Tribes had always been rather nomadic.

But the tiny village Aang had seen wasn’t the summertime hunting camp of nomads, only meant to house a few dozen people between hunts. It’d been the last refuge of a society stretched too thin.

“Aang,” Katara said softly, “when I got angry, and...selfish...over the scroll…”

“It’s okay, Katara,” Aang said. “You’ve already apologized.”

“Right, but - that’s not what I’m getting at.” She fiddled with the water between her arms. “I was upset because everything came so  _ easily _ to  _ you, _ but  _ I’m _ the last Waterbender of the Southern Water Tribe and I just...couldn’t get it. I couldn’t get my element to work with me. And I  _ have _ to learn this, I’ve  _ wanted _ to learn this my entire life. Not just for me, but for my family, my tribe…”

She trailed off. Aang gave her an encouraging look. “You know,” he said, “for someone who never had a teacher, or even  _ seen _ waterbending that wasn’t yours in action...you did manage to figure out a lot on your own. Learning bending moves isn’t even easy when you have a teacher - but you did it without one!”

She smiled weakly. “Thanks.” She idly moved her hands away from each other and back in, stretching out the water between them.

“It’s a shame I didn’t learn waterbending before I got frozen in that iceberg,” Aang mused. “Then I could teach you!”

Katara shrugged. “It’s okay,” she said. “I can manage.” She stretched the water out again and peered at the scroll in Aang’s hands, which he held up obligingly. “I just...kind of wish this was a Southern Tribe scroll, instead of a Northern one.”

Aang blinked. “Uh...why?”

“They took our Waterbenders away,” Katara said. “All of them. That part of our culture, our way of life...it’s  _ gone.” _

“We’ll find you a teacher, Katara.”

“We will,” she agreed. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad we got this scroll. And I’m going to work really,  _ really _ hard to catch up on everything I’ve missed when we find a teacher. But...Gran Gran told me once that Southern style waterbending is different from Northern style. She couldn’t explain  _ how, _ but she  _ knew _ Waterbenders so it must be true, and...there’s no one who could teach me the Southern way. It’s...gone.” She gestured at the scroll. “This, and everything we’ll learn from a teacher - it’ll all be Northern-style waterbending.”

“...Oh,” Aang said softly, and he suddenly had to sit down on the log, the scroll going limp in his hands.

“Aang?”

“We had four Air Temples,” he said. He had to get the thought out quick, before it overwhelmed him. There were so many things about his people’s deaths that he was still coming to terms with - either because he didn’t want to think about it, or because he hadn’t had the realization yet. This was one of those realizations. “North, South, East, and West. We were all the same people, and we moved around  _ a lot, _ but they were all...different.”

The nuns at the Western Air Temple had perfected the trick of walking upside down on the ceiling and had always laughed at anyone who tried and failed to mimic them. The Northern Air Temple had been home to many sky bison polo champions who’d known all sorts of athletic tricks. The Eastern Air Temple had been renowned for weaving the softest clothing and blankets from bison fur. The Southern Air Temple had grown a hybrid of apple that could turn such a dark purple it was almost black.

Aang didn’t know how to do any of that stuff. He was an airbending master, but he didn’t know everything. And now he never would. 

You couldn’t fit the entirety of a culture into a single person.

He was distantly aware of water splashing to the ground, and then Katara was sitting beside him, blue eyes wide with shared grief. She pulled him in for a hug, clutching him tightly, one lost culture to another. “I’m so sorry, Aang.” 

Aang thought of the traditional choreographed sky dances his people would perform at festivals, all careful drops and fancy spins and steps he’d never thought to learn because he’d always thought there’d be time later, and choked out, “Me too.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Kudos and comments are always appreciated. <3
> 
> I always feel for Katara in The Waterbending Scroll. The girl has a very powerful gift that is an extremely important part of her, but she doesn't know how to use it and she's desperate enough to figure it out that she steals from some very dangerous people. And she gets upstaged by a younger kid who's never consciously waterbended before, after a lifetime of dealing with the fact that she is her tribe's only connection to this lost piece of themselves, and being belittled for her efforts to learn it. She was pretty mean, but I can see where the frustration was coming from.
> 
> And I always feel for Aang literally _all the time_ because good god that boy truly did lose everything. There are so many Air Nomad things that will never be brought back, or at the very least will never be the same. Food, art, music, stories, knowledge...so much a twelve-year-old wouldn't know. :(
> 
> Black apples are a thing! Black Diamond apples are only grown in Nyingchi, Tibet, where the high UV light and cooler night temperatures turn the apple skins a very dark purple, nearly black. The apples are a variety of huaniu apple, which is a hybrid made from ten OTHER varieties of apples. They're extremely rare and are only found in high-end Chinese grocery stores, usually in gift baskets. There are also black apples grown in the US, the Arkansas Black, but they aren't as dark as the Black Diamonds. They also need to spend a few months in storage before they're ready to eat, so all the time and work needed before you can sell them means lots of farmers don't bother with them.


End file.
